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Wal-Mart Labor Protests Grow, Organizers Say

Wal-Mart workers rallied outside a store Thursday in Pico Rivera, Calif. on The director of A union-backed group said the protests spread to 28 stores in 12 states on Tuesday.Credit
Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters

In an effort to increase pressure on the retailer as the holiday season approaches, 88 employees at the stores missed work, the spokesman, Dan Schlademan, said.

Mr. Schlademan, director of the union-backed Making Change at Walmart campaign, added that more than 200 employees were traveling to Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to stage a protest on Wednesday during the company’s annual meeting with financial analysts.

He warned that disgruntled Wal-Mart employees, joined by labor unions and community groups, might stage a combined protest and educational campaign the Friday after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.

Mr. Schlademan said the 88 employees who missed work on Tuesday were engaged in a strike that followed what union officials said was a strike by 63 Los Angeles-area Walmart workers last Thursday. They called that the first strike ever in Wal-Mart’s 50-year history.

Wal-Mart officials insisted that the protests were publicity stunts rather than strikes, carried out by a tiny fraction of the nation’s 1.4 million Wal-Mart workers.

Colby Harris, who earns $8.90 an hour after three years at a Walmart in Lancaster, Tex., said, “We’re protesting because we want better working conditions and better wages and because we want them to stop retaliating against associates who exercise their right to talk about what’s going on in their stores.”

Mr. Harris said he missed work on Tuesday to attend a protest by 50 workers and their supporters at his Walmart and at another one in Dallas. Afterward, he got on a bus to Bentonville.

David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said Tuesday’s protest had not affected the company’s operations. “All 4,000 of our stores in the U.S. are open,” he said. “We are staffed adequately to serve our customers and, as always, we’re focused on meeting our customers’ needs.”

Mr. Schlademan said Wal-Mart employees had walked off the job in Dallas, Seattle, Miami, Sacramento and Orlando, Fla., and in the Chicago and Washington areas. Tuesday’s job actions were sponsored by the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, a group of several thousand Walmart employees that is closely affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

“These leaders of OUR Walmart have engaged in a strike to protest Wal-Mart’s retaliation and to send a message to Wal-Mart and their co-workers that they have a right to speak out,” Mr. Schlademan said. “The idea that this is just a publicity stunt is inaccurate.”

He said this week’s events were aimed at pressing Wal-Mart to increase wages, stop cutting workers’ hours and treat employees with respect.

Mr. Tovar said: “We have some of the best jobs in retail. Our full-time average wage is $12.54 an hour, which is $5 above the federal minimum wage.” He said that 300,000 Wal-Mart employees had worked at the company for more than 10 years and that Wal-Mart’s turnover rate was lower than the industry average.

Mr. Tovar said those statistics showed that those who participated in the job action were not representative of Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million employees nationwide.

“It’s no secret that the unions want to organize our associates,” he said. “These protests are union-led and union-funded by unions that are trying to further their own political and financial agenda.”

Julius G. Getman, a labor expert at the University of Texas School of Law, said it can be hard to draw a line between what is a strike and what is publicity. He said the union and OUR Walmart were searching for ways to get Wal-Mart to improve wages and conditions when they see how hard it would be to unionize even a handful of Walmart stores.

“Wal-Mart has so much power — unions typically don’t win those kind of drives,” he said. “They’re groping, they’re planning to find a way to take on Goliath.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 10, 2012, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Wal-Mart Labor Protests Grow, Organizers Say. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe